Network problems with 1950 and Xen

[Ronan Mullally]

On Fri, 3 Aug 2007, Ronan Mullally wrote:

> I've done a bit of digging and it looks like it's a firmware problem on
> the Broadcom ethernet cards - see:
>
>   http://mywiki.ncsa.uiuc.edu/wiki/Dell_PE1950_NIC_Firmware_Workaround

I've made a bit of progress on this and managed to find a compromise
between having LAN access to the BMC and a working dom0 network.

Following the instructions above, I disabled the management firmware on
the second nic (Gb2) and set the BMC LAN channel to Shared.  I then
configured the IP stack in the OS on Gb2.

This effectively means that I've got the nothing on Gb1 but the BMC while
the OS (dom0 and guests) sits on Gb2.  Not pretty, but it works.

For the Dell folks on this list, can I suggest you prioritise this bug?
It's enough for me to recommend to my customers that they avoid this kit
(I'm tarring the 1950 and 2950 with the same brush here) for server
virtualisation and consolidation projects.


-Ronan